prior probability

I presented my work on “Adam Smith in Love” at the annual meeting of the International Adam Smith Society (IASS), which took place at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. (As an aside, I am currently working on a sequel to my Adam Smith paper, which is tentatively titled “Adam Smith in Paris”, in anticipation of the next meeting of the IASS, to take place at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia in July of 2022.) Suffice it to say that many excellent papers — and two books! — were presented at this year’s conference, but my three favorite presentations were the following:

1. Toshiaki Ota: “The Roles of Judges in Adam Smith’s Jurisprudence”
2. Maria Pia Paganelli: “Adam Smith’s Digression on Silver: The Centerpiece of The Wealth of Nations“
3. Sarah Skwire: “As If: Clueless About the Invisible Hand”

Alas, I have a flight to catch, and in any case, I am unable to provide a direct link to any of these three wonderful works as they have not yet been published, but I will summarize each paper and comment on them over the next few days after I return home to Central Florida …

That is the title of this work of “street sign art” (pictured below from various angles) located in Madison, Wisconsin. This whimsical work of art was created by Portland, Maine-based artist Aaron Stephan and consists of a forest of street signs clustered around a small semi-circular concrete stage across the street from Madison’s Capitol Square. Each street sign bears a word or phrase from poetry, fairy tales, or children’s games, and the blue and green sign colors are meant to evoke lakes and trees. More details are available here via the Wisconsin State Journal.

For my talk at the annual conference of the International Adam Smith Society (IASS) on Friday morning, I have decided to systematize my research on Adam Smith’s private life in the following three tables:

Based on a short entry in Scottish novelist Henry Mackenzie’s memoire, I identified a seventh possible Adam Smith “lost love” in my previous post, a “Miss Campbell.” Who was she; when did Smith fall in love with her; and what, if anything, became of this romance? For his part, Mackenzie himself implies that “Campbell” was a common last name — a “name so numerous that to use it cannot be thought personal” — so that he is not giving anything way by identifying “Miss Campbell” as the object of Smith’s affections. That said, could Mackenzie’s “Miss Campbell” nevertheless be the same “young lady of great beauty and accomplishment” that Dugald Stewart refers to in his end note — originally Note H; now Note K — in his biography of Smith?

In the alternative, could Mackenzie perhaps be referring to Duke Henry’s younger sister Lady Frances (b. 1750, d. 1817), whose portrait as a little girl is pictured below? Although this is just a conjecture on my part, it is not a far-fetched one for several reasons. To begin with, Lady Frances was the daughter of Caroline Campbell Scott, so she was a “Campbell”. Secondly is Mackenzie’s observation that the woman, whoever she was, was “of as different dispositions and habits from him as possible.” Lady Frances was the daughter of a wealthy aristocratic family, while Adam Smith was an absent-minded professor. Lastly, Adam Smith corresponded with Lady Frances on multiple occasions (at least three letters from Smith addressed to Lady Frances survive), and both lived at Dalkeith House for at least two months during the fall of 1767.

Given these many coincidences (see above), I will further explore the relationship between Lady Frances and Adam Smith in my next blog post …

Thus far in my “Adam Smith in Paris” series, we have identified six possible lost loves in Adam Smith’s life — five of them by name(!):

1. Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (b. 1713, d. 1792).
2. Marie Françoise Catherine de Beauvau-Craon (b. 1711, d. 1786), a/k/a “Madame de Boufflers”;
3. The “Duchess of Anville“, who may, or may not, be the same person as Marie Louise Nicole Elisabeth de La Rochefoucauld (b. 1716, d. 1797), who was the Duchesse d’Enville and the mother of the Duke de la Rochefoucault. (See, for example, this family tree and this passage from the autobiography of John Adams, especially footnote 3.)
4. Lady Janet Anstruther (b. 1725, d. 1802).
5. Madame Nicol.

In addition to these historical individuals, two additional women (who may, or may not, be the same person) are mentioned by various primary sources:

6a. An “English lady” who Adam Smith reportedly fell in love with in the town of Abbeville in northwestern France according to a hearsay report contained in a private letter by Dr James Currie.

6b. The “lady of Fife“, who Adam Smith had loved (past tense) according to his friend, confidant, and travel companion the Abbe Colbert.

Now, what if I told you that there might be a seventh lost love? I will conclude this series of blog posts by considering just such a possibility, so read on …!

Toward the end of his long and remarkable life, Henry Mackenzie (b. 1745, d. 1831), whose portrait is pictured below, jotted down a series of personal recollections, hoping to have these memories published in a book of “anecdotes and egotisms,” as Mackenzie himself referred to them. (See Fieser (2003), p. 251. As a further aside, Mackenzie’s wide-ranging collection of anecdotes was eventually assembled by Harold William Thompson and published by Oxford University Press in 1927.)

Among other things, Mackenzie’s collection of anecdotes includes a short but intriguing entry with the title of “Smith and Hume in Love.” For the record, the first part of Mackenzie’s brief recollection about Smith is quoted in full below (Mackenzie (1927), p. 176, reprinted in Fieser (2003), p. 255, omission and parenthetical remark both appear in the original):

“Adam Smith [was] seriously in love with Miss Campbell of __ (the name is so numerous that to use it cannot be thought personal), a woman of as different dispositions and habits from him as possible.”

So, who was Henry Mackenzie, and why should we believe him? To begin with, Mackenzie was a distinguished Scottish lawyer and popular novelist. He also co-founded, along with Dugald Stewart, the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Moreover, Mackenzie knew Adam Smith personally and “was much in Smith’s company when he [Smith] lived in Edinburgh in the last twelve years of his life.” (This quote is from Ian Simpson Ross (2010), p. 227.) So, yes, I find Mackenzie to be a credible source.

But more importantly, who was Miss Campbell? I will explore the identity of Miss Campbell in my next post …

Artist Credit and Works Cited

Artist of the Portrait of Henry Mackenzie: Henry Raeburn.

James Fieser, Early Responses to Hume, vol. 10, Thoemmes Press (2003).

Henry Mackenzie, “Smith and Hume in Love”, in Harold W. Thompson, editor, The Anecdotes and Egotisms of Henry Mackenzie, 1745–1831, p. 176, Oxford University Press (1927 [1831]).

Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press (2010).

I am interrupting my “Adam Smith in Paris” series to share this tweet by @johnkrausphotos:

Who was the “lady of Fife” mentioned in my previous post and in Colbert’s letter dated 18 September 1766? Alain Alcouffe and Andrew Moore (2018, 15 n.18) identify this possible love interest as Lady Janet Anstruther (b. 1725, d. 1802), who “was renowned for her beauty and for her reputation as a flirt” and whose portrait is pictured below. Additionally, the second edition of Dugald Stewart’s biographical essay “An Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith” contains the following enigmatic endnote (Stewart, 1980/1811, pp. 349–350, emphasis added):

“In the early part of Mr Smith’s life it is well known to his friends, that he was for several years attached to a young lady of great beauty and accomplishment. How far his addresses were favourably received, or what the circumstances were which prevented their union, I have not been able to learn; but I believe it is pretty certain that, after this disappointment, he laid aside all thoughts of marriage. The lady to whom I allude died also unmarried. She survived Mr Smith for a considerable number of years, and was alive long after the publication of the first edition of this Memoir. I had the pleasure of seeing her when she was turned of eighty, and when she still retained evident traces of her former beauty. The powers of her understanding and the gaiety of her temper seemed to have suffered nothing from the hand of time.”

What are we to make of this passage? For his part, Ian Simpson Ross (2010, p. 227) describes this early love interest as “a Fife lady whom he [Smith] had loved very much,” but neither Ross nor Stewart provides any additional evidence about the geographical location of this love affair; nor do they identify this woman by name. Nevertheless, if this love affair occurred in the Kirkcaldy of Smith’s youth, a small parish located in the burgh of Fife, it should not be impossible to identify the lady. (At the time of Smith’s birth in 1723, Kirkcaldy had a population of 1,500. See, e.g., Heilbroner (1999), p. 46.)

So, was this “young lady of great beauty and accomplishment” in Stewart’s endnote Lady Janet Anstruther, as alleged by Alain Alcouffe and Andrew Moore in their 2018 paper? Was she the same “lady of Fife” referred to in Colbert’s 1766 letter? Whoever she was, Dugald Stewart is a credible witness to an attachment “well known” to Smith’s friends, since Stewart personally knew Smith and many of Smith’s acquaintances. Also, to give the reader some idea of Stewart’s stature and sterling reputation, he co-founded the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783 and held the chair of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh for thirty-five years, from 1785 until 1820. Why would Stewart risk sullying his own reputation (and that of his friend Smith) by reporting mere gossip or an unfounded rumor?

I will present one last piece of evidence of Adam Smith’s love life in my next post …

Artist Credit and Works Cited

Artist of the Portrait of Lady Janet Anstruther: Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Alain Alcouffe and Andrew Moore, “Smith’s Networks in Occitania—March 1764–October 1765,” presented at the 31st Annual Conference of Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society (Glasgow) (July 17–21, 2018).

Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of Great Economic Thinkers, 7th rev. ed., Touchstone (1999).

Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press (2010).

Dugald Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith, LL.D., in Ian Simpson Ross, editor, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, pp. 269–351, Oxford University Press (1980 [1811]).